Need
by Earwax
Summary: PostEpiphany. Need isn't the same as desire. AngelDarla ficlet.


**Author's note:** All Italics are from various S2 episodes.

**Need**

**(An Angel Fic)**

"_I need you, just as I've always needed you."_

Darla hadn't lied when she had told him that. She had always needed him. She just hadn't known how much until that night in the barn so many centuries ago. She had taken the only horse to Vienna and left her boy to fight off Holtz alone. She hadn't cared, not really. She could always make another to take his place. She hadn't known, just then, how irreplaceable Angelus really was.

Vienna glittered in the moonlight. It was a place full of potential, victims ripe for the picking. It had been glorious, but it hadn't been the same without Angelus. She'd missed her boy and a small part of her had regretted abandoning him. She remembered feeling lonely in Austria. Her boy was gone, Darla believed. She'd have to find herself a new consort.

He had come back. Against all odds, Angelus had survived and returned to her. She remembered his rage, his passion. The things he did to her - it was that night she knew she had chosen well. Finally, a vampire worthy enough to spend eternity with.

She had been wrong. She had lost him to the soul, to that cancer, that goodness.

"I spent two-hundred and fifty years without Angel. You think just because I went through a little human phase I'd go all gooey?"

She thought she could deal with it. She thought she could deal with the loneliness, the longing, the need. But Darla couldn't deal. She was weak. She had always been weak.

Twice, she had played the game. Twice, she'd been pathetic enough to try to restore him to her side. The first time she had lost to a cheerleader, the second time she had lost to an epiphany.

"You miss him, like a heartbeat."

Drusilla had been half-right. Darla didn't miss her heartbeat. She only missed Angel. She needed him, which was strange because she knew she had never loved him. But love wasn't the same as need, was it? She had spent two hundred and fifty years without Angelus. Whole centuries filled with blood and color, whole centuries without him. What had Angelus ever done to make her need him?

"I'll give ye that view ye crave, darlin'. I'll give ye everythin'."

He had made promises, so many of them. They were all broken now; all played out. She missed the view.

"You're leaving with the stallion, aren't you?"

She had left her Sire for him. Not for long, of course. She had returned months later, begging for forgiveness. The Master had taken her back with wide arms and sharp teeth. He had understood. He had known how much she had needed him. He had known that the need for a Sire and the need for a Childe were two very different things.

She had been his Most Favored. It was he who had given Darla her name. She had been his daughter, his dear one, his favorite. She had spent her first thirty years as a vampire by his side, in his bed. He told her things, private things he revealed to no one else. The night she left her Fledglinghood was the night he told her his name: Heinrich Joseph Nest. After so many years of calling him "Master" his human name felt strange on her tongue. The Master had told her they were past humanity; past the need for the titles humanity had given them. Then, Darla had wondered, why had he told her his human name? The Master had smiled indulgently and asked her to guess.

He had acted like a father to her.

He was gone now. Gone like Angelus. That hurt more than she would ever admit.

"We can't restore one life without taking another. You see? In order for Darla to live, you must die."

Angel would have died for her. He would have sacrificed himself to save her sick, human body from a disease that should have destroyed her four centuries ago. No one had ever cared enough to do that for her. It wasn't love. It didn't have to be. She had never wanted love. She had never felt it before.

The closest she'd ever come to it was feeling what Angel had felt when those stakes had pierced his chest.

"_I felt how you care. The way no one's ever cared before - not for me."_

Was that only a few months ago? How quickly that caring had turned to rage. After Drusilla had turned her, he had set her on fire.

Angel had killed her once before. Years ago, in Sunnydale, he had staked her to save the Slayer. He claimed to have loved the girl. She had made him happy.

"You took me places, showed me things, huh? You blew the top off my head. But you never made me happy."

"_Buffy wasn't happiness. She was just new!"_

Even after that, she couldn't let go. A small part of her dared to hope he would find his way back to her. She still needed him.

"_You saved me. Sorry I couldn't do the same for you."_

Why couldn't Angel realize she didn't want to be saved? She had chosen Satan over God once before.

"_Let the devil take me if he'll have me."_

God had never done anything for her.

"_You damned me."_

He'd never done anything for Angel either.

"God doesn't want you! But I still do!"

She'd never have him again. He didn't want her, couldn't love her, couldn't hate her. He couldn't even kill her. Not again. It had hurt too much the first time. Even now, she knew every demonic instinct, every drop of blood denied that he would ever destroy the one who had made him.

After Angel had burned her she had crawled away, licking her wounds and craving her Sire; finding only Lindsey instead. A mortal. It was a mortal who nursed her back to health. It was a mortal who had fallen in love with her.

She could turn him. It wouldn't be that difficult and she knew he wouldn't object. He wanted her, but she only wanted Angel.

"You could die here. Chances are you will... And you don't care."

"I care. I guess I just don't mind."

Stupid mortal. Didn't he realize there was nothing worse than death?

She didn't want Lindsey. He was a means to an end. She had used him and he had let himself be used. Why? Because he "loved" her? No one had ever loved her.

"What am I? Am I Darla?"

She was Darla now, but she wasn't before. Angel had been willing to die for a girl who wasn't her. She wished she could remember her name, the one her buyers had screamed before they'd paid her all those years ago in Jamestown. What had she been before Darla? She couldn't remember.

"We're done. Let yourself out."

Angel didn't need her anymore and Darla knew she would never stop needing him. She couldn't. Because she was still weak, and, despite it all, she still ached for his touch, the touch of the one person who would never touch her again.

She remembered how he had comforted her.

"_I'm not gonna leave you."_

Angel always broke his promises.

"_You're never gonna be alone again."_

She was alone now.


End file.
